Lead story

Tories forced to think again

by Daphne Liddle

JEREMY Corbyn has called on Prime Minister David Cameron to guarantee that nobody will be worse off as a result of cuts to tax credits.

During Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday in the House of Commons, the Labour leader told the PM he had lost the backing of Conservative supporters over the draconian reforms.

Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne are still reeling from the vote in the House of Lords on Monday that will delay the imposition of the planned tax credits by at least three years.

The £4.4 billion cuts were due to be implemented in April 2016 and would have reduced tax credits paid to low paid workers by around £1,300-a-year — much more for some people.

Now the Tories have been sent back to think again and their plans are in disarray and they are refusing to answer questions.

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Tories forced to think again

Terrorists reeling under Russian onslaught in Syria

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

RUSSIAN and Syrian warplanes are pounding terrorist militia positions on all fronts as the Syrian army advances to drive ISIS, Al Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood gunmen out of their strongholds in parts of Aleppo and the Damascus countryside.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are returning to their homes in the wake of the Syrian army’s victories and more and more gunmen are accepting the government’s amnesty and surrendering to the authorities.

Meanwhile Syria has dismissed imperialist media reports that Cuban and north Korean forces were now fighting alongside the Syrian army in the battle against ISIS. Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi categorically denied any presence of Cuban or Democratic Korean troops in his country saying that Russia is more than enough to fight terrorism.

And now Jordan, like Israel, has agreed to co-ordinate its operations with the Russian air-force — breaking ranks with imperialism in the war against terror in Syria and forcing the Americans and their Turkish and feudal Arab lackeys to respond more seriously to Russian efforts to end the conflict.

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Terrorists reeling under Russian onslaught in Syria

In solidarity with anti-fascist resistance in Ukraine

by New Worker correspondents in London and Bristol

ANTI-FASCIST protesters were out in force last Friday in London and on Saturday and Monday in Bristol — to protest against the visit to London of leading Ukrainian neo-Nazi Andriy Parubiy for talks with senior Government officials — and to analyse Nato aggression and strategy in Europe.

Andriy Parubiy is the deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament and a politician with a far right record. Parubiy, along with Oleh Tyahnybok, in 1991 founded the Social National Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler’s Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians.

The ideology of the SNPU was radical nationalism and neo-Nazism. Its official symbol was the somewhat modified Wolf’s Hook (Wolfsangel), used as a symbol by various the German SS divisions. Ukraine had its own Galician SS division, which provided large numbers of concentration and death camp guards.

As seen by the SNPU leadership, the Wolf ’s Hook became the “idea of the nation”. Moreover, the official name of the party’s ideology, “social nationalism,” clearly referred back to the “national socialism” of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP or Nazi party) and of the Hitlerite regime.

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In solidarity with anti-fascist resistance in Ukraine

Editorial

The benefits of an effective opposition

THE HOUSE of Lords on Monday evening voted decisively to delay David Cameron’s and George Osborne’s plans to cut working tax credits for hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers. Such a delay can only be temporary but nevertheless Chancellor George Osborne has been forced to rewrite his budget planned to be announced next month and to reduce the cuts by around £4.4 billion — what he calls “transitional help”. Hundreds of thousands of people will now have a better Christmas and New Year.

There were two defeats for the tax credit cuts in the Lords: peers voted by a majority of 17 to back Labour calls for the Government to provide full financial redress to the millions of tax credit claimants who will be affected when their entitlements are reduced. Peers inflicted a second defeat by backing a motion tabled by cross-bencher Molly Meacher to delay the cuts until an assessment of their financial impact is carried out.

It just goes to show what can be achieved now we have an opposition that actually makes an effort to oppose instead of just passively accepting whatever savage austerity measures the Tories dish out.

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The benefits of an effective opposition